Internet reaction of the Apple's new tablet the iPad has featured many mocking remarks. Many say the device's name sounds like a feminine hygiene product.

Many in public say the device's name sounds like a feminine hygiene product

On Wednesday Apple aired its long
awaited tablet computer, which it dubbed the iPad.
Basically an oversized iPhone/iPod Touch, the new device hopes to
capitalize on the popularity of these smaller products, filling the
same niche as more traditional netbooks and UMPCs.

Some
Apple fans have indicated claimed the tablet will kill less
full-featured e-Book readers like the Amazon Kindle or recent Sony
Pocket Reader. If that's the case, these competitors sure
seem unusually nonchalant.

Sony, which actually competes with
the tablet in two arenas -- eReaders (Sony Reader series) and mobile
gaming (PSP
Go) -- says that it may actually get a boost from the iPad.

States Steve Haber, president of Sony’s Digital
Reading Division, "The introduction of another mobile device,
which includes digital reading as part of its functionality, is a
good thing for the digital book business. Mobile devices with
reading capabilities will play a key role in the paradigm shift from
analog to digital content. At Sony, we’re focused on devices
optimized for digital reading and believe that digital books sales
will surpass print sales within five years, if not
sooner."

Predicting the demise of print sales is
certainly a bold move, but not a terribly new one; Amazon and Sony
have been trumpeting that line for some time now. The more
interesting tidbit is that Sony actually thinks the increased
attention about tablets and digital books surrounding the iPhone will
actually help Sony's sales.

Sony certainly has a lot of
business savvy in the field of digital books. It is second only
to Amazon in this arena, and it is estimated to own 35 percent of the
market, selling an estimated 1 million units in 2009.

One
advantage it has over its new Apple competitor is perhaps a less
obtrusive name; since its announcement the iPad has been lampooned by
many readers who say it sounds like a feminine hygiene product.
Describes
Annie Colbert on the blog "Holy Kaw!", "With "iTampon"
quickly emerging as a trending Twitter topic, it's probably safe to
say that many women found themselves cringing as they asked, 'Do any
women work at Apple?'"

Ironically, the new Apple
wonder-product shares its name with a fictional device devised in a
MadTV skit -- an Apple feminine hygiene device called the iPad.
Writes "Dontstealmypen" a
particularly prolific Twitter, "Will women send their
husbands to the Apple store to buy iPads?" and "The
iPad—Another embarrassing topic I get to discuss with my kids."

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

In some regards these accusations are accurate. This is because Apple wants to maintain consistency between iPod, iPhone and iPad. Content (including apps, games, music & videos) purchased on one of these should be portable to all of the others. These devices all use the same basic OS, SDK and similar ARM processors; although the iPad's proc is far more capable than the other devices.

Netbooks are only better at three things:[1] multi-tasking[2] Flash playback[3] being cheap

Other than that, they offer crappy displays, crappy pointing devices (which is an important part of computing) and most have cramped keyboards.

What can the iPad do better than netbooks?:[1] multi-touch and gestures (I personally love what this has done to computing)[2] landscape or portrait orientations to suit your preferences[3] high def video (although some newer and more expensive netbook models can get there)[4] far thinner[5] far lighter[6] longer battery life for video playback

If you want to compare netbooks to iPads, you should be looking at high res netbooks that can support HD video. These cost more, weigh more and are less portable than the entry level $499 iPad. None of them offer multi-touch and none of them can flip between landscape and portrait by simply rotating the device.

If Apple can add better multi-tasking support with an OS upgrade, then the iPad will be better than netbooks on every front that matters to me (I personally don't care for Flash and have plug-ins on my computers to keep it in check). I prefer open protocols for online content.

Most people don't care about multitouch, even those who have the ability to use it on their MacBook, like my father. Slightly more useful for zooming.... and that's it. Everything else can be done easier and quicker via mouse or keyboard. Granted that for a tablet I can't exactly say how it'll work out. Seeing a review would be nice, but we've still got a wait for that. Same about the battery life. It'd be great to see 10 hours of video playback, but somehow I seriously doubt that.

Landscape or portrait orientation is also a rather moot point as well since any tablet should function like that. I'm sure for many a tablet though that it'd involve having to change some video options, but they could have an application running to let you do it through the taskbar like they do on laptops.

I can give you thinner and lighter, but it's not a bother for me and it shouldn't be for most people. If you can't carry around 3 pounds then you probably have far bigger problems than what "computer" is best for you. I carry my "heavy" laptop around with my school books and have zero problems. I don't know the exact weight of my laptop including the charger but 5+ lbs seems pretty reasonable. Hell, it doesn't even weigh as much as most of my school books.

I'd rather not have this thing be thinner either, but that's cause it will be easier to break if someone happened to sit on it. I've had people sit on my laptop before and it's perfectly fine. If this thing or the MacBook Air got sat on I'm sure it'd be quite fucked up.

Although, I can say that if you're going to be playing videos, especially HD videos, you're likely not going to be going with the $499 iPad. 16 GB of HD video isn't very much by itself, let alone with other apps and music on there. And if you want to stream most of the time then you got to at least get 3G cause you can't get WiFi everywhere. The extra things you have to buy to make this tablet functional put it well above $499. I think $130 just to be able to pay for a 3G service is absurd, but Apple has always been that way to me. Even if you only go up to the 32GB model with no 3G you're up to $600 which put's you out of range on just about every netbook, likely all but I haven't looked in a while, and you get less functionality.

I don't see any good wins for Apple in there.

I would also like to point out that you are quite right that netbooks and most laptops in general have crappy displays. Laptops suffer in a similar fate to all of Apple's computer, lack of customization. Having a nice display would be great if we had the option, but we almost never do unless it's a top-of-the-line model.... and even then not necessarily. I don't have a problem with it since my laptop is not my primary device for anything. It does gaming, videos, and everything else my desktop does but I only use it when I have to. Like at school. I'm not exactly worried about how awesome my game or video looks when I'm only playing it for short periods of time. Games even less so since that was not the purpose of this laptop and henceforth sucks at playing many games. If, however, I was to use a mobile computer primarily to play videos, pictures, games, image editing, etc... that I would love ,and need, a great display. Very few people fall into that category though. As such any display that allows you to do all those things decently will do just fine. You may not feel that way, but you would just fall into the same category as all the graphics whores for games do, to me anyway.

Simple fact that you can't multitask should turn everyone away in this day and age. That's just inexcusable.